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At least one million people told to evacuate from three states as Hurricane Florence looms

New York Daily News, The (NY)

Sept. 11--More than a million people are being told to evacuate from three coastal states amid fears that a catastrophic hurricane will hit the Eastern Seaboard later this week.

Hurricane Florence, with winds of 140 miles per hour, is expected to make landfall Thursday night or Friday in the Carolinas, and it is expected to hit the region harder than any hurricane since Hazel leveled 15,000 buildings in North Carolina in 1954.

Already a Category 4 storm, Florence is expected to aproach Category 5 status later Tuesday and wreak havoc on North Carolina, South Carolina and Virginia. The storm was spotted 400 miles south of Bermuda at 11 a.m. on Tuesday.

"This is going to produce heavy rainfall, and it may not move very fast," former FEMA director Craig Fugate said. "The threat will be inland, so I'm afraid, based on my experience at FEMA, that the public probably not as prepared as everybody would like."

"We know that this evacuation order is going to be inconvenient for some people," Gov. McMaster said Monday, according to NBC News. "But we do not want to risk one South Carolinian's life."

A hurricane watch and storm surge watch were issued for the coast of North Carolina on Tuesday morning, according to The Weather Channel. These cautions are usually issued two days before a storm hits.

"Please be prepared, be careful and be SAFE!" President Trump tweeted Monday.

Liz Browning Fox, who resides in the village of Buxton on the North Carolina Outer Banks, plans to ignore the evacuation orders. She said her house is on a ridge and was built to withstand a hurricane.

"You never know, there could be tree missiles coming from any direction," she said. "There is no way to be completely safe.